American Sentences

[cascadiabound]

Smudgy skies streaked with sheets of rain as firs shimmy.

 

[HarryHill]

..
Hand full of angry Formicidae

Feeding Ant Lions is fun except for getting the ants to let go.
...

 

[butters]

reclines in the truck and unzips...waves invitation; buzzards circle

 

[Angeline]

Measurements should be precise. Poetry should be a little hinky.

 

[Remec]

Just a Truism

Hinky is as hinky does, 'specially with regards to poetry.

 

[Winter_Fare]

Don't make heavy weather of an art that yearns to rise above the clouds

 

[Piscator]

Lent has yet to begin and already the Easter Egg has been smashed.

 

[Winter_Fare]

What's the worlds loss with one less narcissistic sociopath in it?

 

[Piscator]

Wordle Lesson 1 - use your wrong choices to guide you towards right ones.

 

[Angeline]

Penn Station, 1975

Off 34th Street, down three flights, chased by a fat werewolf lookalike.

 

[Winter_Fare]

Untying knots with skin left flushed and pressed like sugar cookies is sweet.

 

[42Below]

American Sentence

An "American Sentence" is a poetic form invented by Allen Ginsberg that is intended to be something like an Americanized haiku. Rather than a short three-line poem broken into five, seven, and five syllables (really quite a different thing when rendered in Japanese on), Ginsberg created a form that is also seventeen syllables in length, but in the form of a single, horizontally formatted sentence. The form first appears in his collection Cosmopolitan Greetings (1994). Some of the poems have titles, like this one, the earliest composed (1987) of those in the book:

Tompkins Square Lower East Side N.Y.​

Four skinheads stand in the streetlight rain chatting under an umbrella.​

Most of the poems Ginsberg prints in Cosmopolitan Greetings have no title, and are comprised of a single seventeen syllable sentence. However, one is formatted as multiple sentences with the total of all sentences being seventeen syllables:

Rainy night on Union Square, full moon. Want more poems? Wait till I'm dead.​

(which, incidentally, seems to imply that "poems" should be pronounced as disyllabic), one is an incomplete sentence:

To be sucking your thumb in Rome by the Tiber among fallen leaves...​

and one is comprised of a single sentence consisting of two seventeen syllable lines:

He stands at the church steps a long time looking down at new white sneakers—​

Determined, goes in the door quickly to make his Sunday confession.​

Some are surreal in imagery, some blatantly sexual, some at least implicitly political. There are several sites on the Internet that talk about American Sentences, including one by a poet who claims to have written one a day since January 1, 2001.

Here are some external links:

• About.com article on American Sentences.
• Paul E. Nelson's page: Lots of information and examples (he's the guy who's been writing one daily for fourteen years).
• Online poetry journal issue on American Sentences

The index to this thread can be found here.

Pre coitus, hanging like a horse; postpartum, hung like a cowboy.

 

[42Below]

The word is spelled (or, British, spelt) differently in the USA and the UK. Americans spell it "aluminum" and tend to pronounce it like a·LUM·i·num. In the UK (this is, of course, my impression--I'm not British) it's spelled "aluminium" and pronounced more like a·loo·MIN·i·um, where the first syllable is a minor stress and the third a major stress.

My impression is that Canadian English tends to follow British spellings but more often than not American pronunciation (please correct me on that if that's wrong, Northerners). No idea how Kiwis, Ozzies, South Africans, etc. would spell/pronounce the word.

A more pure example of pronunciation difference (I think) is a word like "controversy," which Americans usually pronounce like CON·tro·ver·sy and Brits like con·TROV·er·sy.

Again, I think.

I am open to correction on this from those of you who know your own language conventions better that I do.

Kiwi: a·loo·MIN·i·um is possible / al-li-min-ni-um is demographic / ala-minnium, after a few drinks

 

[42Below]

thankyou! yes, that makes perfect sense and now i have a grasp of the concept if it's as you believe. see? i just needed someone explaining it to me in simple terms

American sentence, disarticulate image read left to right.

 

[42Below]

Don’t know having never written haiku are haiku demotic?

 

[42Below]

Okay, as a frame, an American sentence seems to fit somewhere in the following 3xs 17 syllables:

American sentence; disarticulate image read left to right.
Don’t know having never written haiku are haiku demotic?
Rapidly moving syllables condensed in experienced image.

Lost bank card. Mother ringing embassy. Young girl. midnight Singapore.

Technically with a purests voice, the comma, full stop / period. the Capitalisations. All are debatable.

Still happy with it.

After all the American sentence began not ends in Allen Ginsberg.

 

[butters]

use invisible ink—a transmutation of words experienced

 

[42Below]

Low hanging fruit
(sometimes you’ve just gotta)

Low hanging Angry orange; wet water Big water Ocean water

 

[Angeline]

The Secret To My Equanimity

Surrounded by death I embrace life and the endless power of love.

 

[42Below]

Where asphalt up chucks pavement, young mother strolling with sun lit baby.